For the love of Christmas

It was Christmas 2004 and Sandra McLaren noticed that her 4 young children did not eat any of the Christmas pudding and neither did most of the adults at the table. So the challenge was set! Firstly, she removed the stodgy suet and replaced it with butter. This gave it an incredibly light texture, a creamy finish and meant it heated through a lot quicker. It also meant vegetarians could eat it!

Secondly, she used finely ground flaked almonds, zingy zest from oranges and lemons and sourced the best dried fruits and prunes she could find. Finally, she soaked these for days in fine Brandy, Guinness beer, orange and lemon juice and slow-steamed the mixture for 8 hours followed my a maturing process of several months.

Next Christmas was a different story. And so, McLaren’s Christmas Pudding was born!